Making money as a beginning character
How do I trade my items to other players? The very fundamental understanding of how to exchange goods for credits starts with knowing the two sub-systems the game offers to secure trades. #Bazaar Terminals #Secure Trade While the Bazaar Terminals offers a site where one can sell items, either via 'instant sale' or 'auctions' for up to 10 million, the secure trade option is a direct player-to-player trade interface. The player-to-player interface is the only one that can really be exploited and used to lure other players by trading containers filled with junk or giving them a promise of a payment at a later date. A good rule-of-thumb is that when conducting secure trades to have a written agreement either by logging your conversation with the other player (you can save conversations via /log before you commence the conversation) or the in-game mail. If the trade goes wrong, you can ask GM's to reverse the trade but you will need some sort of written testimony of the trade in order to do so. The best documentation is the in-game mail. Forum trades (trades that have been conducted on the server trade forums) will either be finalized in-game via private vendors or player-to-player secure trades. Pick-up and drop-off vendors is a common term when conducting forum trades. Selling your items via the bazaar is very easy, very secure and you'll do yourself a favor by learning to use the bazaar terminals effectively in the first few hours of gameplay. Remember that if items are on the bazaar, its because they haven't been sold - yet. There is a market for everything, the only interesting parameter is the price of the items. Seeing that an item is listed on the bazaar for 10 million credits does not mean that is the 'real value' of the item. Anyone can list junk at 10 million, the fun part starts when you sell your goods instead of having them listed for months on end. Anyone can use the bazaar, and as a combat trader I often find myself creating 1-credit auctions. You will notice that some items only sell for a few credits while others sell for hundreds of thousands of credits and even millions. It all depends on the current market. Sometimes the market just isn't there for your item, in which case you can turn to the trade forums to investigate, get a pricecheck or try an auction. Sometimes its better to wait if you have something valuable. Loot and Sell Spaceship Components It is one of the fastest ways to earn money in the game, and it can be quite fun. To start, you just need to choose and find a pilot recruiter, who will begin you on the easy missions and send you on your way to tougher trainers and tougher missions, which will mean better loot and more credits. See Rebel Pilot Trainer, Imperial Pilot Trainer or Freelance Pilot Trainer for trainer locations, or you can use the /find command or planetary map to locate the closest on your current planet. These trainers will give you a started ship free complete with "prototype" components. Once you have a spaceship you may begin your missions or just go for a hunt. For each spaceship you destroy in space, you will automatically gather some credits, based on the difficulty of the ship. You also have a chance to loot a spaceship component, the level of which is also based on the difficulty of the destroyed ship. If your are in a group in space, to get loot (both credits and components), you will have to be the one to deal the majority of the damage. All looted spaceship components can be sold to a Chassis Dealer NPC. These are located in each large Starport, which are found on the beginner and some mid-level planets. Components are bought for 1000 credits per level, which corresponds to its level of Reverse Engineering. Alternitively, loot components can be sold to Shipwrights. If nothing else, a shipwright can turn the parts you have into something better. Looting components is also a way to save on buying them. While most looted pieces will not compete with Reverse-Engineered or crafted products of Shipwrights, many are better than the prototype components you are given for free from your trainer. Legacy Quest If you complete the Legacy Quest you should have several million credits which are great to be spent towards things that you need such as good armor and weapons. Combat Missions Earning money from mission terminals has never been easier! Each person in the group receives the full mission reward. So while the credits may not seem like a lot for one person, when you have a group the lair and creatures will go down much faster. While you do have to be in range of the rest of the group when the lair is destroyed, you do not have to be at their level. Therefore starting characters can join up with a group containing CL80 characters, allowing each group member to pick missions around the 80 difficulty level. That means 8-9k per mission for each player. Some groups may be picky about letting lower-level players in (if they want to really power grind), but most are just looking to increase their group size. Do note that most groups are formed to grind XP and not cash, so while everyone could just hit the lair until it's destroyed and then go after the creatures, most players take out as many of the creatures as possible before destroying the lair completely. Entertainer Missions If you thought combat missions provided rewards, try the dangerous but profitable life of an itinerant entertainer. As a Novice Entertainer, you can get 2, count them 2, missions for gigs at the same venue and in 10 minutes of performing complete both. Just head to the nearest Entertainer Mission Terminal and get two dancer or musician gigs for your local cantina or hotel. The waypoint for the gig will be outside the venue, but you need to walk inside and start dancing or playing your instrument for an uninterrupted 10 minutes. When you get the mission completion messages, head on back to the terminal for more. Faction Destroy Missions Faction Destroy Missions usually pay out over 1000 credits, and can also give you faction points. The Destroy missions usually mean you need to travel about 1–3 km away from the terminal, and destroy a base, depending on which faction you are working for. Some of these missions will pit you up against CL25-40 NPCs, on my last check, so I suggest you bring a group. Kashyyyk Quests If you have the Rage of the Wookies Expansion, you can travel to Kashyyyk, and do the quests there. There is one quest, given out at the Rodian Hunters Camp, that you can do repeatedly. The Quest involves you killing 8 Varactyl (CL26-32), and bringing their plumes back to the quest giver. Although Not much of a reward, you can do this unlimited times. NOTE: Kashyyyk is NOT a beginners planet. Most creatures involved in these quests are High-Leved and Elites. Space Mining Space MiningAsteroid resources are likely the single most valuable resource class in the game. On many servers, even one full cargo hold (1000 units) of asteroid resources can be sold easily for over 100cpu (credits per unit) = 100k credits. In terms of game time/credits, this is probably the most lucrative option for the intermediate pilot. Given that the necessary equipment can be attained freely from a quest, a player with only a few days of experience in space can develop their own space mining operation without serious outlays of time or credits. Buyers of asteroid resources include the professions of Trader Engineers and Trader Structure. Selling asteroid resource on the bazaar is possible, but contacting a local shipwright or posting on your servers trade forums will also work. AFK Spamming in a major commercial center that you are selling asteroid resources will also get you plenty of tells/emails. Two popular asteroids include Iron and Petrochem; these are used to make "Heavy Variant" ships, which are widely considered the best grinding ships for Imperial and Rebel pilots. Bringing a shipwright the resources needed for these ships will probably result in a greatly discounted price for the chassis. Selling Resources 1. To enter the Resource Business, you have to buy some harvesters as soon as possible. Depending on the servers current market, you have to pay around 500-1000cr per personal harvester. You start the game owning 10 lots and each of the harvesters will reduce your remaining lots by one; I started with the following setup: * 5 Personal Mineral Extractor (1lot 720cr/day 600power/day) * 1 Personal Chemical Processor (1lot 720cr/day 600power/day) * 1 Personal Natural Gas Extractor (1lot 720cr/day 600power/day) * 3 Wind Power Generator (1lot 1440cr/day) 10 Harvester (1000cr each) = 10000cr 2. Now we have to try to earn 10000cr (+4320cr. for the wind power generators running for the first day) for the harvesters and obviously find a vendor from which we can purchase them. In the bazaar search under Deeds. 3. Placing the harvesters. All professions have the ability to survey, but this requires a survey tool. One good indicator for nice resource spots is the penetration by other harvesters. If you run into a big farm of personal, medium or heavy harvesters, most likely you will find nice resource spots there. If you don't run into them, you should survey as long as needed to find good spots (never plant your harvester on a spot below 40%). Speak to Alduq Besene in Mos Eisley, you can make a full set of survey tools for yourself and earn some credits at the same time. 4. The first resource you want to survey for is wind. You need the energy for planting your miners. As soon as your three wind power generators are planted on a 40+ spot, leave them running for a day and try to earn enough money for starting your miners. You will need the energy collected by the wind generators to power the other harvesters. 5. You will need 9360cr for day two and therefore you should do enough missions to get the money. 6. Day two: Now your situation should be like that: * 3 wind power generators running * Enough wind energy to start the miners * Enough money to start the miners 7. Now you need good resources and if you follow the same instructions (survey and miner farm scouting) you should be able to find a very nice spot for your harvesters. Recommended resources are; Ore (any type), Steel, Fiberplast. Plant them, pump 'em up with money and energy for a day and enjoy the outcome on day three. Again you have to get 9360cr. for day three, but after this day it should be no problem to get the money for running your little harvester business. 8. Day three: Done...you are in the resource business. Fly back to your harvesters and retrieve all resources, put in the money and energy for another day and move your butt to the nearest Bazaar-vendor (big cities with starports are best: Coronet, Mos Eisley, etc.). You should divide the resources according to the cpu (credits per unit) the users normally pay on your server to keep the price of each lot under the Bazaar limit of 20000cr. 1-2 cpu is pretty much a dumping price and you should be careful with such a low budget. First, it will make it harder for you to run your business. At the end of the day you have now a very good source for getting money on a regular basis without too much hassle. To harvest will take you no longer than 15min. a day, plus travel time. The next step would be to take a close look at the quality of your resources. If you want to continue working as a resource dealer, you have to care about your reputation. Good quality for a reasonable price will get you a lot of customers. You should obviously save some money everyday to replace your personal harvesters with medium and later on with heavy ones to get more resources. Tip: be sure to check up with your local architect, if you provide him with the resources, he might give you a discount on mediums and larges (Ore is probably one of the most valuable on the market, so try to go after that, maybe gemstones too, as gungan statues require 1K of it, I don't know about ore hot spots, but there are gemstone deposits of decent quality in abundance on Lok, steel is sometimes 80%+ too, so If you're willing to risk fighting CL 35's that may aggro you, go for Lok). The top selling grind resources on most galaxies are Ore (any type) and Steel, with ore probably commanding a premium. If you don't want to fool with the 20k limit of the bazzar, because you have several 100k stacks, you can sell on your servers trade forums. You will have a buyer for ore easily. There is a formula for the output of a resource, and it isn't too complicated. The formula is based on the Base Extraction Rate (BER) for the harvestor you are using. Personal Extractors, such as those listed above, typically have BER ratings of from 1-4, medium harvestors will have anything from 4-10, and heavy harvestors from 10-15. Power Generators have significantly different rates. The actual amount of resources you will acquire from using your harvestors follows the amount of resources at the point of extraction, where 65% is the "baseline" for resources. Anything less than 65% concentration will give you less than the BER of your harvestor, while anything above 65% will give you more than the BER of your harvestor. The exact amount will be the actual concentration divided by 65%. So, say for example you find a good concentration of any particular resource that is 70%. 70%/65%=1.0769 Take this number, the 1.0769, and multiply it by the BER of your harvestor to determine the AER, or Actual Extraction Rate. Note that, even though a harvestor may show a BER of 2, this number is unfortunately a fraction, so it may be 1.9 or 2.1. I have not seen a harvestor go beyond a tenth personally, but I suppose it could happen. To continue with our example, the percent of resources over the baseline multiplied by the BER of your harvestor equals the AER. This portion of the harvesting formula is not as important to remember, however, as your harvestor will actually show you the exact decimal value of your AER once you turn it on. However, the next important thing is how this equates to an actual extraction amount. This number, the AER is the total number of kilograms of a resource you collect. Now you're probably asking, what exactly is a kilogram of resources in Star Wars? The best that I can determine it without actually seeing the code the programmers used is about 56.666666 units of a given resource per kilogram. So, once you have the AER for a given harvestor, multiply the AER by 56.66666 and this will give you the amount of resources that harvestor will collect in one hour of operation. This will also give you the value of the resource you're collecting. For example, if you collect a resource at exactly 65% using a BER4 extractor, the rate will be 4 kg/hour or about 267 units of the resource per hour. Since the harvestor costs you 30 credits per hour to operate, that essentially means you're getting 267 units of resources for 30 credits (or about 0.112 credits per unit). If you then turn that around and sell it for 1 credit per unit (and you can usually sell a high-quality resource for MUCH higher), then you're making about a 1000% profit. (Note that I didn't include the cost of powering your harvestor in the cost of the resource, because when you perform the same calculations for your average power generator and apply that amount to the cost per unit of the harvestor, it adds about .01 cpu, depending on the conditions of your generator.) Anyone who can refine these formulae better (for example, a more exact kg-to-unit conversion factor) please do so. Formula (res%/65% x BER = AER) (AER x 56.6666 = units per hour) (units per hour/cost per hour = credit investment) ---- In correction to the above listed formula, a kilogram is just used to describe a unit of a particular resource. Extraction rates are calculated as the rate per real-world minute of which a particular resource is harvested. An extraction rate of 4 kg/hr would yield 4 units per minute, which equates to 240 units per hour. The above listed concentration percentage equal to your harvester's BER is actually closer to 66.65%, or to be even more exact, 66.66666665%, but shorter seems to calculate just as well from what I've seen. Another formula to use, perhaps easier to use is this: BER x Concentration Percentage x 1.5 The 1.5 takes into account the 50% increase to harvest rates as of Publish 27. You'll find the results using that formula are identical to res%/66.65% x BER Category:Guides